The Nuttall Encyclopædia/Q

Quadragesima (i. e. fortieth), a name given to Lent because it lasts forty days, and assigned also to the first Sunday in Lent, the three Sundays which precede it being called respectively Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima.

Quadrant, an instrument for taking altitudes, consisting of the graduated arc of a circle of ninety degrees.

Quadratic Equation, an equation involving the square of the unknown quantity.

Quadriga, a two-wheeled chariot drawn by four horses abreast, used in the ancient chariot races.

Quadrilateral, The, the name given to a combination of four fortresses, or the space enclosed by them, in North Italy, at Mantua, Legnago, Verona, and Peschiera.

Quadroon, the name given to a person quarter-blooded, in particular the offspring of a mulatto and a white person.

Quadruple Alliance, an alliance formed in 1719 between England, France, Austria, and Holland to secure the thrones of France and England to the reigning families, and to defeat the schemes of Alberoni to the aggrandisement of Spain.

Quæstors, the name given in Roman history to the officers entrusted with the care of the public treasury, originally two in number, one of them to see to the corn supply in Rome, but eventually, as the empire extended, increased, till in Cæsar's time they amounted to forty. Under the kings they were the public prosecutors in cases of murder.

Quaigh, a name formerly given to a wooden drinking-cup in Scotland.

Quain, Jones, anatomist, born at Mallow, Ireland; was professor of Anatomy and Physiology in London University; was author of “Elements of Anatomy,” of which the first edition was published in 1828, and the tenth in 1800 (1796-1865).

Quain, Richard, anatomist, born at Fermoy, Ireland, brother of preceding, and professor in London University; author of a number of medical works; bequeathed a large legacy to the university for “education in modern languages” (1800-1887).

Quain, Sir Richard, physician, born at Mallow, cousin of preceding; edited “Dictionary of Medicine,” and was President of Medical Council in 1891 (1816-1898).

Quair, an old Scotch name for a book.

Quakers, the Society of Friends (q. v.), so called first by Justice Bennet of Derby, because Fox bade him quake before the Lord.

Quarantine, the prescribed time, generally 40 days (hence the name), of non-intercourse with the shore for a ship suspected of infection, latterly enforced, and that very strictly, in the cases of infection with yellow fever or plague; since November 1896, the system of quarantine as regards the British Islands has ceased to exist.

Quarles, Francis, religious poet, born in Essex, of good family; a member of Christ's College, Cambridge, and Lincoln's Inn; held divers offices at the Court, in the city, and the Church; was a bigoted Royalist and Churchman, a voluminous author, both in prose and verse, but is now remembered for his “Divine Emblems,” and perhaps his “Enchiridion”; he wrote in his quaint way not a few good things (1592-1644).

Quarter Days, in England and Ireland Lady Day, 25th March; Midsummer Day, 24th June; Michaelmas Day, 29th September; and Christmas Day, 25th December; while in Scotland the legal terms are Whitsunday, 15th May, and Martinmas, 11th November, though the Whitsunday term is now changed to the 28th May.

Quarter-deck, the part of a ship abaft the main-mast, or between the main and mizzen, where there is a poop.

Quarter-Sessions, a court held every quarter by justices of the peace in the several divisions of a county to try offences against the peace.

Quarter-staff, strong wooden staff 6½ ft. long, shod with iron, grasped in the middle; formerly used in England for attack and defence.

Quarterly Review, a review started by John Murray, the celebrated London publisher, in February 1809, in rivalry with the Edinburgh, which had been seven years in possession of the field, and was exerting, as he judged, an evil influence on public opinion; in this enterprise he was seconded by Southey and Scott, the more cordially that the Edinburgh had given offence to the latter by its criticism of “Marmion.” It was founded in the Tory interest for the defence of Church and State, and it had Gifford for its first editor, while the contributors included, besides Southey and Scott, all the ablest literary celebrities on the Tory side, of which the most zealous and frequent was John Wilson Croker.

Quartermaster, in the army an officer whose duty it is to look after the quarters, clothing, rations, stores, ammunition, &c., of the regiment, and in the navy a petty officer who has to see to the stowage, steerage, soundings, &c., of the ship.

Quartette, a musical piece in four parts, or for four voices or instruments.

Quarto, a book having the sheet folded into four leaves.

Quasimodo Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter.

Quass, a beer made in Russia from rye grain, employed as vinegar when sour.

Quatre-Bras (i. e. four arms), a village 10 m. SE. of Waterloo, where the roads from Brussels to Charleroi and from Nivelles to Namur intersect: was the scene of an obstinate conflict between the English under Wellington and the French under Ney, two days before the battle of Waterloo.

Quatrefages de Bréau, French naturalist and anthropologist, born at Berthezenne (Gard); studied medicine at Strasburg; was professor at the Natural History Museum in Paris; devoted himself chiefly to anthropology and the study of annelides (1810-1892).

Quatremère, Étienne Marc, French Orientalist, born in Paris; was professor at the College of France; was distinguished for his knowledge of Arabic and Persian, as well as for his works on Egypt; was of vast learning, but defective in critical ability (1782-1857).

Quatremère de Quincy, a learned French archæologist and writer on art, born in Paris; was involved in the troubles of the Revolution; narrowly, as a constitutionalist, escaped the guillotine, and was deported to Cayenne in 1797, but after his return took no part in political affairs; wrote a “Dictionary of Antiquities” (1755-1849).

Quatro Cento (i. e. four hundred), a term employed by the Italians to signify one thousand four hundred, that is, the 15th century, and applied by them to the literature and art of the period.

Quebec (1,359), formerly called Lower Canada, one of the Canadian provinces occupying that part of the valley of the St. Lawrence, and a narrow stretch of fertile, well-cultivated land on the S. of the river, which is bounded on the S. by the States of New York and Maine, and on the E. by New Brunswick; it is twice the size of Great Britain, and consists of extensive tracks of cultivated land and forests interspersed with lakes and rivers, affluents of the St. Lawrence; the soil, which is fertile, yields good crops of cereals, hay, and fruit, and excellent pasturage, and there is abundance of mineral wealth; it was colonised by the French in 1608, was taken by the English in 1759-60, and the great majority of the population is of French extraction.

Quebec (63), the capital of the above province, and once of all Canada, a city of historical interest, is situated on the steep promontory, 333 feet in height, of the NW. bank of the St. Lawrence, at the mouth of the St. Charles River, 300 m. from the sea, and 180 m. below Montreal; it is divided into Upper and Lower, the latter the business quarter and the former the west-end, as it were; there are numerous public buildings, including the governor's residence, an Anglican cathedral, and a university; it is a commercial centre, has a large trade in timber, besides several manufacturing industries; the aspect of the town is Norman-French, and there is much about it and the people to remind one of Normandy.

Quedlinburg (19), an old town of Prussian Saxony, on the river Bode, at the foot of the Harz Mountains, 32 m. SW. of Magdeburg, founded by Henry the Fowler, and where his remains lie; was long a favourite residence of the emperors of the Saxon line; it has large nurseries, an extensive trade in flower seeds, and sundry manufactures.

Queen Anne's Bounty, a fund established in 1704 for the augmentation of the incomes of the poorer clergy, the amount of which for distribution in 1890 was £176,896; it was the revenue from a tax on the Church prior to the Reformation, and which after that was appropriated by the Crown.

Queen Charlotte Islands, a small group of islands on the W. coast of North America, N. of Vancouver's Island, 80 m. off the coast of British Columbia, a half-submerged mountain range, densely wooded, with peaks that rise sheer up 2000 ft.

Queenborough, a town on the Isle of Sheppey, 2 m. S. of Sheerness, between which and Flushing, in Holland, a line of steamers plies daily.

Queen's College, a college for women in Harley Street, London, founded in 1848, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1853, of which Maurice, Trench, and Kingsley were among the originators; attendance of three years entitles to the rank of “Associate,” and of six or more to that of “Fellow”; it is self-supporting.

Queen's Colleges, colleges established in Ireland in 1845 to afford a university education to members of all religious denominations, and opened at Belfast, Cork, and Galway in 1849, the first having 23 professors, with 343 students; the second 23 professors, with 181 students; and the third 37 professors, with 91 students. There is also a Queen's College in Melbourne.

Queen's County (6), one of the inland counties of Leinster, in Ireland, N. of King's County, mostly flat; agriculture and dairy-farming are carried on, with a little woollen and cotton-weaving; population mostly Roman Catholics.

Queen's Metal, an alloy of nine parts tin and one each of antimony, lead, and bismuth, is intermediate in hardness between pewter and britannia metal.

Queensland, a British colony occupying the NE. of Australia, 1300 m. from N. to S. and 800 m. from E. to W., two-thirds of it within the tropics, and occupying an area three times as large as that of France. Mountains stretch away N. parallel to the coast, and much of the centre is tableland; one-half of it is covered with forests, and it is fairly well watered, the rivers being numerous, and the chief the Fitzroy and the Burdekin. The population is only half a million, and the chief towns are Brisbane, the capital, Gympie, Maryborough, Rockhampton, and Townsville. The pastoral industry is very large, and there is considerable mining for gold. The mineral resources are great, and a coal-field still to be worked exists in it as large as the whole of Scotland. Maize and sugar are the principal products of the soil, and wool, gold, and sugar are the principal exports; the colony is capable of immense developments. Until 1859 the territory was administered by New South Wales, but in that year it became an independent colony, with a government of its own under a Governor appointed by the Crown; the Parliament consists of two Houses, a Legislative Council of 41 members, nominated by the Governor, and the Legislative Assembly of 72 members, elected for three years by manhood suffrage.

Queenstown, a seaport, formerly called the Cove of Cork, on the S. shore of Great Island, and 14 m. SE. of Cork; a port of call for the Atlantic line of steamers, specially important for the receipt and landing of the mails.

Quelpart (10), an island 52 m. S. of the Corea, 40 m. long by 17 broad, surrounded with small islets in situation to the Corea as Sicily to Italy.

Quercitron, a yellow dye obtained from the bark of a North American oak.

Querétaro (36), a high-lying Mexican town in a province of the same name, 150 m. NW. of Mexico; has large cotton-spinning mills; here the Emperor Maximilian was shot by order of court-martial in 1867.

Quern, a handmill of stone for grinding corn, of primitive contrivance, and still used in remote parts of Ireland and Scotland.

Quesnay, François, a great French economist, born at Mérez (Seine-et-Oise), bred to the medical profession, and eminent as a medical practitioner, was consulting physician to Louis XV., but distinguished for his articles in the “Encyclopédie” on political economy, and as the founder of the Physiocratic School (q. v.), the school which attaches special importance in State economy to agriculture (1694-1774).

Quesnel, Pasquier, a French Jansenist theologian, born in Paris; was the author of a great many works, but the most celebrated is his “Reflexions Morales”; was educated at the Sorbonne, and became head of the congregation of the Oratory in Paris, but was obliged to seek refuge in Holland with Arnauld on embracing Jansenism; his views exposed him to severe persecution at the hands of the Jesuits, and his “Reflexions” were condemned in 101 propositions by the celebrated bull Unigenitus; spent his last years at Amsterdam, and died there (1634-1719).

Quételet, Adolphe, Belgian astronomer and statistician, born at Ghent; wrote on meteorology and anthropology, in the light especially of statistics (1796-1874).

Quetta, a strongly fortified town in the N. of Beluchistan, commanding the Bolan Pass, and occupied by a British garrison. It is also a health resort from the temperate climate it enjoys.

Queues, Bakers', “long strings of purchasers arranged in tail at the bakers' shop doors in Paris during the Revolution period, so that first come be first served, were the shops once open,” and that came to be a Parisian institution.

Quevedo y Villegas, Francisco Gomez de, a Spanish poet, born at Madrid, of an old illustrious family; left an orphan at an early age, and educated at Alcalá, the university of which he left with a great name for scholarship; served as diplomatist and administrator in Sicily under the Duke of Ossuna, the viceroy, and returned to the Court of Philip IV. in Spain at his death; struggled hard to purify the corrupt system of appointments to office in the State then prevailing but was seized and thrown into confinement, from which, after four years, he was released, broken in health; he wrote much in verse, but only for his own solace and in communication with his friends, and still more in prose on a variety of themes, he being a writer of the most versatile ability, of great range and attainment (1580-1645).

Quibéron, a small fishing village on a peninsula of the name, stretching southward from Morbihan, France, near which Hawke defeated a French fleet in 1759, and where a body of French emigrants attempted to land in 1795 in order to raise an insurrection, but were defeated by General Hoche.

Quichuas, a civilised people who flourished at one time in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, and spoke a highly-cultivated language called Quichua after them.

Quick, Robert Hebert, English educationist; wrote “Essays on Educational Reformers”; was in holy orders (1832-1891).

Quicksand, sandbank so saturated with water that it gives way under pressure; found near the mouths of rivers.

Quietism, the name given to a mystical religious turn of mind which seeks to attain spiritual illumination and perfection by maintaining a purely passive and susceptive attitude to Divine communication and revelation, shutting out all consciousness of self and all sense of external things, and independently of the observance of the practical virtues. The high-priest of Quietism was the Spanish priest Molinos (q. v.), and his chief disciple in France was Madame de Guyon, who infected the mind of the saintly Fénélon. The appearance of it in France, and especially Fénélon's partiality to it, awoke the hostility of Bossuet, who roused the Church against it, as calculated to have an injurious effect on the interests of practical morality; indeed the hostility became so pronounced that Fénélon was forced to retract, to the gradual dying out of the fanaticism.

Quilimane (6), a seaport of East Africa, on the Mozambique Channel, in a district subject to Portugal; stands 15 m. from the mouth of a river of the name.

Quilon, a trading town on the W. coast of Travancore, 85 m. N. of Comorin.

Quimper (17), a French town 63 m. SE. of Brest, with a much admired cathedral; has sundry manufactures, and a fishing industry.

Quin, James, a celebrated actor, born in London; was celebrated for his representation of Falstaff, and was the first actor of the day till the appearance of Garrick in 1741 (1693-1766).

Quinault, French poet; his first performances procured for him the censure of Boileau, but his operas, for which Luini composed the music, earned for him a good standing among lyric poets (1635-1688).

Quincy (31), a city in Illinois, U.S., on the Mississippi, 160 m. above St. Louis; a handsome city, with a large trade and extensive factories; is a great railway centre.

Quincy, Josiah, American statesman, born at Boston; was bred to the bar, and entered Congress in 1804, where he distinguished himself by his oratory as leader of the Federal party, as the sworn foe of slave-holding, and as an opponent of the admission of the Western States into the Union; in 1812 he retired from Congress, gave himself for a time to purely local affairs in Massachusetts, and at length to literary labours, editing his speeches for one thing, without ceasing to interest himself in the anti-slavery movement (1772-1864).

Quinet, Edgar, a French man of letters, born at Bourg, in the department of Ain; was educated at Bourg and Lyons, went to Paris in 1820, and in 1823 produced a satire called “Les Tablettes du Juif-Errant,” at which time he came under the influence of Herder (q. v.) and executed in French a translation of his “Philosophy of Humanity,” prefaced with an introduction which procured him the friendship of Michelet, a friendship which lasted with life; appointed to a post in Greece, he collected materials for a work on Modern Greece, and this, the first fruit of his own view of things as a speculative Radical, he published in 1830; he now entered the service of the Revue des Deux Mondes, and in the pages of it his prose poem “Ahasuérus” appeared, which was afterwards published in a book form and soon found a place in the “Index Expurgatorius” of the Church; this was followed by other democratic poems, “Napoleon” in 1835 and “Prometheus” in 1838; from 1838 to 1842 he occupied the chair of Foreign Literature in Lyons, and passed from it to that of the Literature of Southern Europe in the College of France; here, along with Michelet, he commenced a vehement crusade against the clerical party, which was brought to a head by his attack on the Jesuits, and which led to his suspension from the duties of the chair in 1846; he distrusted Louis Napoleon, and was exiled in 1852, taking up his abode at Brussels, to return to Paris again only after the Emperor's fall; through all these troubles he was busy with his pen, in 1838 published his “Examen de la Vie de Jésus,” his “Du Genie des Religions,” “La Révolution Religieuse au xixe Siècle,” and other works; he was a disciple of Herder to the last; he believed in humanity, and religion as the soul of it (1803-1875).

Quinine, an alkaloid obtained from the bark of several species of the cinchona tree and others, and which is employed in medicine specially as a ferbrifuge and a tonic.

Quinisext, an ecclesiastical council held at Constantinople in 692, composed chiefly of Eastern bishops, and not reckoned among the councils of the Western Church.

Quinquagesima Sunday, the Sunday before the beginning of Lent.

Quinsy, inflammation of the tonsils of the throat.

Quintana, Manuel José, a Spanish lyric and dramatic poet, born in Madrid; was for a time the champion of liberal ideas in politics, which he ceased to advocate before he died; is celebrated as the author of a classic work, being “Lives of Celebrated Spaniards” (1772-1857).

Quintette, a musical composition in obligato parts for five voices or five instruments.

Quintilian, Marcus Fabius, celebrated Latin rhetorician, born in Spain; went to Rome in the train of Galba, and began to practise at the bar, but achieved his fame more as teacher in rhetoric than a practitioner at the bar, a function he discharged with brilliant success for 20 years under the patronage and favour of the Emperor Vespasian in particular, being invested by him in consequence with the insignia and title of consul; with posterity his fame rests on his “Institutes,” a great work, being a complete system of rhetoric in 12 books; he commenced it in the reign of Domitian after his retirement from his duties as a public instructor, and it occupied him two years; it is a wise book, ably written, and fraught with manifold instruction to all whose chosen profession it is to persuade men (35-92).

Quipo, knotted cords of different colours used by the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians for conveying orders or recording events.

Quirinal, one of the seven hills on which Rome was built, N. of the Palatine, and one of the oldest quarters of the city.

Quirites, the name the citizens of Rome assumed in their civic capacity.

Quito (80), the capital of Ecuador, situated at an elevation of nearly 9000 ft. above the sea-level, and cut up with ravines; stands in a region of perpetual spring and amid picturesque surroundings, the air clear and the sky a dark deep blue. The chief buildings are of stone, but all the ordinary dwellings are of sun-dried brick and without chimneys. It is in the heart of a volcanic region, and is subject to frequent earthquakes, in one of which, in 1797, 40,000 of the inhabitants perished. The population consists chiefly of Indians, whose religious interests must be well cared for, for there are no fewer than 400 priests to watch over their spiritual welfare.

Quito, Cordillera of, a chain of mountains, the chief of them volcanic, in Ecuador, containing the loftiest peaks of the Andes, and including among them Antisana, Cotopaxi, and Chimborazo.

Quit-rent, a rent the payment of which frees the tenant of a holding from other services such as were obligatory under feudal tenure.

Quorra, the name given to the middle and lower course of the Niger.

Quorum, the number of the members of a governing body required by law to give legality to any transaction in the name of it.